All That's New(s) from A to Z presents news from The Zack Company, Inc., a full-service literary agency representing authors of commercial fiction and nonfiction. Read our blog to learn more about our clients and their titles.
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Monday, January 16, 2006

I’ve received a couple of posts here about my lack of posts these past few weeks. Like many a publishing company, my firm was closed over the holidays. Since then, I’ve been playing catch-up on a lot of work, not to mention planning my wedding! Yes, much to my bride-to-be’s frustration, I’m insisting on helping with the planning. ;)

One decision I’ve made in the past few weeks is to close to new queries or submissions until further notice. Why is this? Well, in 2005, I received 1435 queries. I declined 1133. I received 195 requested sample chapters. I rejected 223. I requested and received sixteen full manuscripts. Now, all of these queries and submissions are from prospective clients. And the truth is that some current clients have had works sitting here too long, waiting for me to read them. Thus, for 2006, I have decided to go deeper with the current clients’ works, rather than continuing a broad search for new clients. In doing this, I have posted on my site that I’m not accepting new queries or submissions and suggest that authors check back there before querying.

Further, I will no longer be answering questions on absolutewrite.com’s Ask the Agent forum. I actually started this forum just over a year ago. And I’ve enjoyed being involved. But over time I’ve found that there are many others there with the time on their hands to answer questions, and thus I’ve decided to focus my attention on my website and answering questions via this blog. If you go to my site, there’s a form to send a question. Questions asked there, if appropriate, will be answered here. Similarly, questions posted here in comments will be answered in future blogs.